A cultural map of sacred places, local beliefs, and meaningful travel.

The country-wide basics: purifying at the water basin, the two-bows-two-claps-one-bow form at shrines, and what temples do instead.

Hands together and hands folded, how the bows work, and what to do at the threshold of a hall. Starting with what is different from visiting a Japanese shrine.

A modern Japanese coinage, not a traditional religious category. Where the word came from, what it does and does not claim, and why this site uses it anyway.

Uphill from the main hall of a Korean temple stands a smaller one, and inside it an old man with a tiger. This is where the indigenous religion sits, inside the Buddhist institution.

A shrine is Shinto and a temple is Buddhist, and you can usually tell at the gate. Why the line is cleaner on paper than on the ground, and what a government order in 1868 has to do with it.

Who the mudang are and what a gut is. And what to do if you walk in on one.

The four things you are most likely to receive, write, draw or be given at a shrine or temple, what each is actually for, and the one of them people most often get wrong.

A programme that puts you inside a temple’s own timetable for a day or two. What you do, which type to book, and what to be ready for.

The three great Gwaneum sites, the five relic halls, and the crowds before the entrance exam. Where the saying about one wish comes from, and where the record stops.